kolmapäev, aprill 23, 2008

the foreign minister for finland and estonia

"The European Union is 15 times richer than Russia, its population is three times larger, and it spends seven times as much on the national defence. Strong Europe is in the interests of both Estonia and Finland.''

How eminently sensible words. I have to confess that I just can't get very excercized about Russia. At the moment it's just Saudi-Arabia on the taiga with lots of useless, non-productive weaponry - it has a chance to develope a strong middle class, a functioning civil society and infrastructure, but actually the danger for Latin Americanization seems quite real. A super rich elite, a huge amount of badly educated poor, bad demographics in general and a corrupt political system depending on oil sales (which, btw, will fairly soon run out). I can't see them threatening the West directly at all - they have more real worries about their Southern and South-Eastern borders. If anything the EU is a natural strategic partner for Russia.

Below his impressions on the Tallinn visit though only in Finnish (he actually does keep the blog himself, strangely enough). He is surely very competent (has a PhD from the London School of Economics about European integration) but does not have much political experience which might cause him quite a bit of trouble.

Kaasautorid

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